Report 82 Anger/Emotion

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This homework has seemed to invite in quite a bit of emotion from here and there... situations that people have needed to vent about, a situation which I felt was unfair but made no sense to argue with, a sudden emotional outburst on my part over a cat I didn't know I really liked not appearing one day when I went outside, my impatience with the daily effects of situations that are in my own hands to change, etc.

So the first thing I noticed was the run-away train that began when something felt 'unfair'... how I began to run over various scenarios from the past and determinations toward self protection in the future. Noticing it really matters. Noticing means that, like the wonderful haiku essay that Vector shared in the time group: http://www.gendaihaiku.com/kacian/anti-story.html , the illusion/story of unstoppable train, can be emptied of the charge it brought up moments before with racing heart and tears of injustice, by settling back into a larger space frame of reference.

It can be cut through by open Seeing.

Well, space has no frame of reference... nowhere to center in and feel sorry for oneself and build up arguments and scenarios. So then what? Looking at the totality rather than at any one or two of these situations, there is the matter of radical personal responsibility, and taking responsibility/blame for my part of things. Thinking about that, immediately some people sprang to mind that I'd not checked in on, who had left messages for me, etc.

One of them literally called within minutes of my having that thought, and I returned the call. It felt good, and I felt myself empowered to address some other things in a way I hadn't before.

I had to take my own advice, of not expecting the answer for a question one asks 'here' to come from 'here' because it may come from 'there'. This was letting go, or at least 'holding in a new way.'

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Guess I'm back to old tricks of editing and editing homework, hah, but this morning (Wed) I woke with (for myself) a profound understanding of something that goes on with people. Our proportions and perspectives are *quite* different at times. It isn't that we're seeing different things as in 'blue table' but we are literally experiencing different worlds 'about' the table.

No matter how well you feel you know someone, there will be gaps. Which can feel discouraging, and confusing. But this is often also great potential. We *cannot* define one another, and pedestals make no sense. We people are bundles of contradictions we don't fit together.

Hah, actually my cat is too. One minute he bites me and the next he licks and heals where he bit.

During the New Orleans retreat there was a screaming and cursing woman in the middle of the night, and the first night I heard her, I felt her to be almost near to coming into the very room with me to an extent that I literally sat on the floor behind the bed for a moment, in a kind of knee-jerk reaction.

Then it passed.

My response to the 'conflict' was I thought, rather normal considering all the possible scenarios (which I didn't really do it was almost automatic), but the next day others who had the same experience hearing the woman had nothing near that response. Our estimations of what was going on were vastly different. The feeling of that moment was what I would call extreme, and was really about more than just that moment. It spotlighted conditioning and fear.

Which is an opportunity to let that clarify itself further...

Silence and space are naturally healing and nourishing!! They can't help it.

I could go to therapy for twenty years, and while it may help to talk it out, it wouldn't 'solve' anything. It is a bit of 'you can't get there from here', ala Pema. I can't reason away a blindspot response to something. I can see it. I can let it be seen. I can aspire to offer it up.